He was assistant editor of the Political Science Quarterly in 1902–06, and editor from 1917 of the New Republic in New York City.
He was a co-founder of The New School in New York in 1918, becoming its director in 1922. Johnson helped to save numerous central European scholars from persecution by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, then brought them to a specially-created division of the New School which became known as the "University in Exile". There, among others, he worked with the antifascist intellectual Max Ascoli.[1] He was also an editor of the massive Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1942.[2]
Peter M. Rutkoff, William B. Scott: New School: a History of the New School for Social Research. New York: Free Press 1986.
Claus-Dieter Krohn [de]: Wissenschaft im Exil. Deutsche Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaftler in den USA und die New School for Social Research, Frankfurt a.M. Campus 1987.
Alvin Saunders Johnson papers (MS 615). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. [2]
GERALD J. STEINACHER and BRIAN BARMETTLER (2019). "The University in Exile and the Garden of Eden: Alvin Johnson and His Rescue Efforts for European Jews and Intellectuals". Unlikely Heroes: The Place of Holocaust Rescuers in Research and Teaching. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 139–166. doi:10.2307/j.ctvd58t29.9. ISBN978-1-4962-0892-7. JSTORj.ctvd58t29.9. S2CID162519971.